The blog and the links at the wordpress domain will remain for those who may have blogged about or deep-linked to content here, so don’t worry about links in your blogs suddenly going dead. New updates, however, will no longer appear here. For that, you’ll need to go to the new address at starwarsblog.starwars.com.

All the content that appeared here from May 2007 to January 21, 2008 has been moved to the new URL, including your comments.

Our friends over at rebelscum.com have just launched an all-new site dedicated to Japanese Star Wars collecting, posting an informative tutorial on the history of the hobby in the Land of the Rising Sun. Here’s a bit of the intro:

In 1978, turmoil from a galaxy far, far away finally reached the big screens in Japan. Tickets were selling by the thousands, and in every big city everyone was talking about the new Star Wars movie. The stage had been set for a new promotional era in Japan. The first company to realize this potential was Coca Cola. They had devised an ingenious marketing plan that not only boosted sales, but also began a race for toy products throughout Japan. They began advertising new bottle caps which would contain a small vinyl picture of characters and scenes from the movie. There would be 50 designs total. There were even 3 color variations which included a gold background, a silver background, and a pink strip design. It seemed the collecting and trading, among the anxious consumers was endless.

Read the entire article here. As big fans of Japanese Star Wars collectibles, this is one we’ll be watching!

Researchers at Stemagen claim that they used male skin cells to create human embryos, even thought they did not delevop past 100 cells.

It is not clear whether the embryos would have been viable if implanted into a womb. Stemagen did not test whether the embryos had the correct number of chromosomes. But Dr. Wood, who also is a fertility doctor, said, “We’ve seen reproductive blastocysts that look like this or worse and they implant.”

Though it may seem that the only characters who get frequent costume changes in the Star Wars galaxy have to be royalty, that doesn’t mean the Imperial troopers don’t get to mix it up.

The hardcore fans over at IGN.com decided to give some props to the Imperial army with a rundown of the many looks of Clone troopers, stormtroopers, BARC troopers, Galactic Marines, pilots, sandtroopers, Imperial Navy troopers, Imperial gunners, TIE fighter pilots, AT-AT drivers, scout troopers and more.